“Why?”
Ah. Wouldn’t he like to know what Miss Pemberton had been up to. When he’d first seen her peering into the blackness beyond the wainscoting, his first thought had been—had been—well, he wasn’t sure he’d been able to think much at all. His mind had been on the missing girls. But now that they had been found, there were several questions he’d like to ask the wide-eyed and wild-haired Miss Pemberton. The flickering of candlelight up ahead indicated he would be able to do so in very short order.
When he and Rebecca reentered the hallway, Miss Pemberton was on her feet instead of the floor. She leaned against the opposite wall, fingertips massaging her temples, eyes squeezed shut, face twisted in a grimace.
“Where’s Rachel?” he demanded.
Miss Pemberton opened her eyes. Sort of. But she didn’t stop rubbing her temples or push away from her slump against the wall.
“Nursery,” she said, squinting at him as though the meager sconce light burned brighter than the noonday sun. “I took her to her mother.”
“Stay here.”
Without pausing to see her reaction to the terseness of his command, Gavin led Rebecca to the nursery as well. Once the door opened, Rebecca tugged her fingers from his and flew across the room to her weeping mother.
“Rachel broke my dolly,” Rebecca cried as she hurled herself into Rose’s outstretched arms.
“Did not,” Rachel yelled from her position at Rose’s feet.
Gavin laid the now-headless doll on a small table near the doorway. “I’m afraid I did.”
“I’m afraid of everything about this house,” Rose murmured.
He stiffened. Everything meaning what? Meaning him?
“I’ll purchase a new doll for her.”
Rose looked away.
“It’s not the doll,” Nancy cut in. “It’s…” She glanced at her mother, then the girls, then at Gavin. “It’s everything.”
“She means Papa.” Jane sat on one of the twins’ small chairs, her gown puddling on the floor. “We know she means Papa, Nancy.”
Although a spineless worm, Heatherbrook had been the children’s father. For this reason, Gavin nodded gravely and said, “I am very sorry about your loss.”
Rose’s head snapped up, forehead lined, eyes narrowed. She said nothing. Perhaps she was not sorry. Or perhaps she had nothing left to say.
If any other words threatened to escape the dry confines of his throat, Gavin swallowed them.
What did Rose’s expression mean? Did she think him insincere? True, he didn’t lament Heatherbrook’s death. Merely the girls’ loss of a father. Was he that transparent?
Or did she suspect him of causing the incident in the first place? If so, such suspicion poked a sharp hole in Miss Pemberton’s theory that Rose herself might have contributed to her husband’s death. But then, there were plenty of holes in the things Miss Pemberton said, and plenty more holes in the things she did not say.
“I am sorry,” Gavin said again, when it seemed no one else felt the inclination to speak.
“Sorry?” Rose echoed, scooping both twins into her arms. “As if the loss of my husband was not enough—” Shedidblame him! Gavin fought to keep his expression neutral but could not prevent a slight wince. “—getting my children lost in your walls where they might easily have hurt themselves and, God forbid, never been found…Sorry is no substitute for safety. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
A horrible silence fell.
Then, from Jane: “But tomorrow is my birthday.”
All gazes cast in her direction.
“I don’t wish to travel on my birthday,” she insisted. “Uncle Lioncroft promised kite-flying and pall-mall.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “What’s pall-mall?”
Rebecca sat up so fast she knocked Rose’s chin with the back of her head. “I want to fly kites.”
